A Day at the Beach
by Tez
Summary: Fi watches the sunset, gets kidnapped, and makes a new friend. Michael/Fiona overtones.


Disclaimer: Burn Notice doesn't belong to me.

A/N: Set during mid-season 2. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

* * *

Fiona Glenanne leaned back on her elbows, enjoying the feel of the soft breeze ruffling her hair. For once, she didn't have any pressing engagements, nothing that needed shooting or blowing up, and she was spending a rare peaceful afternoon on the beach. Most people - Sam came immediately to mind - would be shocked that she'd ever spend her free time lazing on a beach, since her usual idea of fun _was _shooting things or blowing them up, but once in a while it was nice to simply sit around and unwind.

Besides, of all the places she'd ever lived, none of them did sunsets quite like the beaches of Miami.

As she watched, the last orange-hued rays dropped behind the city's skyline, dissolving into the architectural backdrop of downtown Miami and leaving a multicolored horizon behind them. Fi sighed contentedly and got to her feet; night came fast on the beach, and she was starting to get a little hungry. Time to go to Michael's and hit him up for some yogurt. The only real question was whether she was in the mood for strawberry or peach…

"Hello, beautiful."

Her hand tightened reflexively on the strap of her beach bag, feeling the weight of the .380 HK4 she kept at the bottom of the bag, but the man who'd spoken didn't look like any sort of a threat. He was in his mid-fifties, balding, wearing swim trunks and an oversized t-shirt. Fi gave him a perfunctory smile and continued to head for her car, digging blindly in the bag for her cell phone to let Michael know she was on her way. Her fingers brushed the grip of the pistol first and then encountered the slim flip phone Michael had gotten her after he'd swiped her last phone to use in the middle of a job. As she started to pull out the phone, she felt a sharp sting at her lower back and swore under her breath. That was the other danger of Miami beaches after sunset; the mosquitoes were ubiquitous and really irritating.

Her free hand reached absently to scratch at the stinging spot and froze when her fingers encountered something small and plastic. A wave of dizziness hit her and she swore again, her suddenly numb tongue struggling to form the words. Her other hand brushed the HK4 again, but there was no way she'd be able to get off a good shot with her vision blurring and her arms turning to lead. Cursing her now-clumsy fingers, she managed to flip open the phone inside her bag and hold down the first speed-dial button, hoping that the call would go through.

* * *

"Another satisfied customer, Mikey."

Michael Westen resisted the urge to roll his eyes, grabbing two more beers out of his fridge and setting one in front of Sam.

"I really don't need to hear about your date, Sam."

"All right, all right," Sam acquiesced, trading his empty beer bottle for the new one. "I'm just saying, she was definitely satisfied. You know?"

"I know." Michael took a long sip of his own beer, relieved when the phone rang.

"It's Fi," he told Sam, flipping open the phone, and Sam held up his beer in a jaunty salute.

"Ask her to pick up another six-pack of brewskis, huh, Mike?"

"Fi," Michael greeted her, and frowned when she didn't answer. "Fi?"

"Mike?" Sam asked, setting down his beer when he heard the tone of Michael's voice. "What's wrong?"

He held up a hand to silence Sam, listening intently to the background noise from Fi's phone.

"I've got her bag," a male voice said, sounding breathless.

"What are you, stupid?" a second male voice demanded. "Forget the bag and help me get the girl into the car!"

There was a pause, and then the sound of a car door slamming, and then silence.

"Mike? Mike, what's going on?"

He looked up at his old friend, his face set in a steely expression Sam knew all too well.

"Fi's been taken."

* * *

Fi woke slowly, blinking in confusion at the pervasive darkness around her. _Blindfold_, her mind supplied eventually, the fabric rubbing against the bridge of her nose. After a moment's worth of disorientation, the scene on the beach came back to her with startling clarity: the creepy guy, the mosquito bite that must have been a tranquilizer dart, and her last-ditch effort to call Michael. She hoped the call had given him enough information to at least start looking for her. Hopefully, the people who'd taken her had kept talking after she'd passed out, giving him something he could use.

She took stock of her situation before risking any movements that might alert her captors that she was awake. She was lying on a mattress that, judging from the musty smell, had seen better decades. Her hands were cuffed over her head, and a surreptitious tug proved the cuffs were attached to something that wasn't going to give easily. Her legs were free - _first mistake_, some part of her observed coldly. Having her lower body free meant she could slide her head up to her hands, and the slight tug she felt at the nape of her neck when she moved her head meant they hadn't taken the bobby pins she always kept tucked into her hair. It would be the work of a few seconds to unlock the cuffs and get free.

Now all she needed was to know how many guards there were and what kind of weapons they were carrying. There was no point in getting out of the cuffs only to be forced back into them at gunpoint. She turned her head to the side, rubbing the blindfold against the scratchy pillowcase until it slid down past her nose. A quick shake of her head sent it sliding the rest of the way down to rest around her neck, and she got her first look at the place she was being held.

The large, windowless room with concrete walls and a single flickering light fixture wasn't a huge surprise, and neither were the two tough-looking guards holding Steyr AUG assault rifles. The fifteen other bikini-clad women handcuffed in similar positions to hers, however, came as a bit of a shock.

Not women, Fi realized slowly as she assessed the situation. Girls. None of the others could have been older than twenty. Most were still blindfolded, but several had managed to pull their blindfolds down like she had. To a girl, they all looked scared out of their minds; more than half were weeping quietly, and one girl was trembling so violently that her handcuffs rattled against the pipe she'd been chained to.

Her plan for a quick escape went up in smoke. She could not, _would not_ leave even one of these girls behind, which meant she needed a new plan.

The mattresses were only a foot or so apart, set up in two parallel rows. Fi was on the end farthest from the guards, which was a stroke of luck. She glanced over toward the guards again and caught the gaze of the girl next to her. The girl flinched, shrinking back, but Fi shifted as far toward her as the restraints allowed.

"Hey, sweetheart," Fi said gently to the girl, who was staring wordlessly at her with huge green eyes. "What's your name?"

The girl, who Fi placed around age sixteen, took a shuddering breath. "Shannon."

"Shannon," Fi replied, keeping her voice soft and even, speaking to the girl like she would have to a wounded animal. "That's a good, solid Irish name, just like mine. I'm Fiona."

"Fiona," she repeated slowly, and Fi's heart went out to her. She was clearly terrified. Well, what little girl wouldn't be, waking up handcuffed to a filthy mattress in a strange place, surrounded by other prisoners and guards with guns? She thought suddenly of Claire, her baby sister, who'd been about this girl's age when she'd been taken, and shivered.

"You can call me Fi," she offered, putting all thoughts of Claire out of her mind. This wasn't the time or the place for that. "Shannon, how long have you been here?"

Shannon looked surprised by the question. "A couple of hours, maybe?" she guessed. "I can't see my watch. I don't know what happened. One minute I'm walking on the beach, and then everything goes fuzzy and I wake up here. Do you know who - who did this, or what they want, or anything? I mean, my parents have money. They'll pay a ransom, if that's what they want. Or are they going to just _kill_ me, because I -"

"Shh," Fi murmured, wishing she could reach the girl to soothe her. The last thing she needed was for her to get hysterical. "Has anyone asked you for anything?"

"No one's said anything at all." She sniffled. "You're the first person who's talked to me."

"All right, Shannon," Fi said softly, looking back over at the guards. They were leaning against the wall and talking to each other, clearly not expecting any trouble from their captives. "Listen carefully. I'm going to get everyone out of here, but I'll need your help. Are you willing to trust me?"

Shannon gave her a blank look, then surprised Fi with a dry little laugh. "I think I have to," she replied in a whisper, her own gaze going to the guards. "But how are you going to get past them?"

"I'm going to get us a gun," Fi said, assessing the guards. The taller of the two held the AUG with his right wrist limp and his left thumb over the lens of the sight, which would be smudged from his fingerprint if he actually needed to use the gun. He was clearly new to this, which made him Fi's choice of targets. "We're going to get the guard on the left to come over here, and when he does, I'm going to grab his gun and shoot them both."

"How are you going to get his gun?" Shannon didn't seem particularly gung-ho about the idea. "How are you going to get him over here in the first place? And how are you going to shoot the other guy without him shooting one of us? I don't think this is going to work."

"I am not going to let anything happen to any of these girls," Fi said through clenched teeth, trying and failing to contain her frustration. "Especially you. We're partners now, Shannon. You have to trust me, remember?"

The girl's expression clearly said that she thought Fi was a few rounds short of a full clip, but she nodded warily.

"Good. Good girl." Fi eyed the guard she'd picked. "The most important part is going to be once he gets over here. I'm going to get my hands free -"

"How?" Shannon interrupted, curious. "You can get out of handcuffs? What are you, David Copperfield or something?"

"Or something," Fi agreed, tilting her head to feel the reassuring tug of her hairpins again. "The point is, picking the lock is going to make a little bit of noise; not much, but I'll need you to make enough noise to cover it."

"I can be loud," the blond replied, sounding confident for the first time. "I'm a cheerleader."

Cheerleading was completely outside of Fi's realm of experience, but she'd learned a long time ago that once a partner said they could handle their part of a job, you trusted them to take care of it and moved on with the plan.

"Then this will work," Fi said, sounding far more confident than she felt. For all that she was perfectly capable of getting out of this situation by herself, a part of her still wished that Michael was here. He had a better track record of getting hostages out alive than she did.

_Time to even the score, then_, she thought resolutely, inching her way up the mattress until her questing fingers managed to grab one of her bobby pins and tug it out of her hair. She slid it between two of her fingers, rendering it invisible to the casual observer, and was about to get the guard's attention when the door to the room slammed open.

* * *

They found Fi's bag in the public parking lot just off the beach, not even twenty feet from her car. Her phone, which Sam had used to triangulate the bag's location, was still open and transmitting. Far more worrisome was the H&K at the bottom of the bag; the magazine was full, one round in the chamber, and the safety was still on.

"Mike?"

He held up the gun for Sam's inspection. "Whatever happened, it happened too fast for Fi to get off a shot."

Sam took the H&K from Michael, running his thumb along the slide. "That's pretty fast, Mike."

Michael crouched on the sandy pavement, looking for any clues that might help him figure out what had happened to Fi. He did his best to ignore the sharp ache in his chest that warned him it might be too late, and was rewarded when his sharp eyes caught sight of a promising lead.

"Sam." When the older man turned, Michael held up the little bit of plastic he'd found. It was unremarkable, until you got close enough to see the tiny needle attached to it.

"Dart gun?" Sam guessed, and Michael nodded.

"My guess would be a modified MK22, probably with a silencer if they used it out in the open," he replied, pulling out his cell phone and dialing a number. "Not a common modification. It'd take a specialist to supply the parts…Hello, Seymour? We need to meet. Now."

* * *

Fi swore under her breath in Gaelic as three more men entered the room, two of them armed with the same AUGs the guards carried. The one on the far left she recognized; he was the guy who'd spoken to her on the beach just before she'd been tranked.

The man in the middle was clearly the boss. His suit was an impeccably tailored Armani, its lines marred only by the pistol tucked into the waistband. With the two new guards flanking him, he walked slowly down the aisle between the two rows of mattresses, assessing each of the girls with a callous gaze and running commentary that made Fi want to claw his eyes out.

"Pretty…pretty…oh, very pretty. Hold on to this one for me, please; I have a special buyer in mind for her." He stopped in front of Shannon, who shrank away from him, and he smiled perfunctorily at her. "Don't worry, little one. He's going to be very happy with you," he told her, reaching down to pat her bare leg. She flinched at the contact and Fi's hands curled into fists, the hairpin jabbing into her palm.

"And you…" He trailed off, taking in Fi's murderous expression. "She's a little more mature than our usual selection, isn't she, Smith?"

"Yes, sir," the man from the beach replied nervously. "But she's very striking, don't you think? And very athletic."

"Hmm." The boss considered Fi for a long moment, hands on his hips. "You're right. You have a good eye for this sort of thing, Smith. And I have a client who's been looking for a girl with a little more fight in her, one he can use long-term. He'll be pleased with her, I think."

It took every ounce of self-control Fi had not to lash out with her feet and kick his teeth down his throat. If there hadn't been the other captives to think about, she would've done it in a heartbeat, and to hell with the consequences. Instead, she made herself think of Shannon, and of the fourteen other girls who were headed for an unpleasant fate if she couldn't pull off this escape. When that didn't fully quell the urge, she thought of her little sister, who'd been tortured and gang-raped before she'd been murdered by an opposing faction who'd done it just make a point to her brother Sean's IRA resistance cell. If controlling her temper was the only way to keep these girls from suffering the way Claire had, then by God, she would control it.

"When are the first buyers getting here?" the as-yet-unnamed man on the other side of the boss asked.

"Half an hour," the boss replied, straightening one of his gold cufflinks. "I have to say, I think this is the best batch yet. Well done, the both of you."

Both guards preened a little under their boss's approval, and the trio headed back out the way they'd come.

"Fi -" Shannon breathed as soon as the door closed behind them, and Fi shook her head.

"It's not going to happen," Fi promised her firmly, running through the possible tactical options in her head. Her timetable had just been established for her; she had to get all of these girls out of here in the next thirty minutes. "All right, call the guard over. Tell him you have to pee. Once he's close enough for me to reach him, fake a nervous breakdown or something."

"_Fake_?" Shannon asked, but there was a hint of humor in her eyes that gave Fi a little more confidence in her ability to pull this off.

The blonde tilted her head to the side, looking straight over at the guard Fi had picked.

"Hey!" she called, her voice just the right combination of fear and urgency. "Mister? I need help."

The guard glanced at his partner, then meandered over to Shannon's side.

"What?" he demanded, and Shannon flinched.

"Please," she whispered. "I have to go to the bathroom."

"Nobody's stopping you."

"No, wait!" Shannon protested as the guard started to walk away, and her bright green eyes filled with tears. "Please…I really have to go. _Please_."

Fi had to give the kid credit; she was a fabulous actress. The guard leaned in, reaching for Shannon's cuffs, and Fi slipped the hairpin into the lock on her own cuffs, catching Shannon's gaze.

From the performance the blonde had just put on, Fi had been expecting a pretty good show, but she was blown away by the reality of it. Shannon burst into loud, chest-heaving sobs that startled the guard and neatly covered the sound of Fi picking the lock. The other guard glanced their way, but Shannon's loud pleas to be released were picked up by several of the other girls, and suddenly the entire room was filled with desperate cries.

Fi chose her moment carefully and struck while the other guard was distracted. She surged to her feet in one fluid motion. Bringing her hands together, she used the handcuffs as a weapon as she hit him squarely on the back of the head. He staggered, losing his grip on the gun, and Fi grabbed it, taking out the guard across the room with one well-placed shot before turning it back on the first guard. She moved to undo Shannon's cuffs only to find the girl moving off of the mattress. The guard must have freed her to go to the bathroom before Fi had made her move.

Shannon knelt next to the fallen guard, and Fi nearly scolded her for wasting time before she realized she wasn't trying to minister to the guard. When she stood up a moment later, she held the guard's keys. To Fi's delight, she also held the guard's Glock 23 like she knew how to use it.

"Can you shoot that?" Fi asked, and Shannon nodded without hesitation.

"My dad taught me," she replied. "They would've heard that shot; we have to get everyone out of here."

"Start unlocking handcuffs," Fi said, pleased at the girl's accurate tactical assessment of the situation. "I'm going to get the other rifle."

The AUG had never been a particular favorite of Fi's, but it was used heavily by the Irish army, so she'd had a fair amount of practice with it. With one rifle in her hand and the other slung over her back, she took a position to cover the door, finally in her comfort zone.

"Line up against that wall," Shannon was directing the other girls in a clear voice, pointing to the wall that would be shielded by the door once it opened. "Single file, and be ready to run. Understand?"

The thumping of boots on concrete told Fi the other guards were finally responding to the shots. She braced herself, locking her arms, and pulled the trigger as the door opened. The first guard staggered back but didn't fall, and she swore when she realized they'd taken the time to don body armor. She got a clean head shot on one guard, but the other one already had a bead on her, and she flinched instinctively as the sound of another shot echoed through the room. It took a moment before she realized that she hadn't been hit, and another moment for it to sink in that the second guard was also dead, a dime-sized bullet hole sitting squarely in the middle of his forehead. She turned to find Shannon standing next to her, the Glock held confidently in her small hands.

"Your dad must have been one hell of a teacher," Fi observed, and Shannon gave her a quick smile.

"Is it going to be safe to take the others out of here?" Shannon asked, again showing far more tactical acumen than Fi would have expected. "If there are buyers coming here, they're probably armed, and there may have been more guards than just these four."

"And the boss is still out there," Fi agreed. "Search the guards and find a phone."

Shannon checked the closest body and held up a phone triumphantly.

"You want me to call the police?"

Fi glanced at the girls, huddled against the wall, and shook her head slowly.

"If they show up, lights and sirens blazing, the buyers will know the game is up," she replied. "We need something stealthier if we want to catch them all."

"Where do we get something stealthier?"

Fi's lips drew back in a predator's smile as she reached for the phone.

* * *

Michael answered on the first ring.

"Hello?"

"Michael -"

"Fi." Her name sounded like a prayer on his lips. "Where are you?"

"Warehouse," she replied shortly, adjusting her grip on the rifle. "Not sure where; you'll have to figure it out somehow. Get here as fast as you can and bring as much firepower as you can find."

"How many hostiles?" That was the wonderful thing about Michael; he wouldn't demand an explanation until there was time for her to give him one.

"At least one more in the building, but there are more coming in the next twenty minutes, and I have fifteen civilians in here."

To his credit, he didn't comment on Fi's uncharacteristic concern for other people getting caught in the crossfire.

"Keep this phone line open; Sam's tracing it now," he replied instead. "There's a warehouse near the beach where Seymour delivered five modified tranquilizer guns last week; best guess is that's where they're holding you. We're already on our way."

Fi looked over at the line of girls, seeing tear-streaked faces and thinking again of Claire.

"Hurry, Michael."

"Hang in there, Fi. We're coming."

* * *

"Was that your boyfriend?"

"What?" Fi glanced over to find Shannon watching her, a smirk on her face. "Who, Michael? He's not my boyfriend."

"Riiight." Shannon tossed her blonde hair over one shoulder, adjusting her grip on the pistol she held. "You're just friends. I'm, like, so sure."

Fi's glower was met with a girlish giggle. She rolled her eyes and held her position, covering the door and waiting impatiently for Michael to arrive.

Six and a half minutes later, the sound of gunfire echoed down the hall. Fi tightened her grip on the rifle as Shannon shushed the frightened girls. The footsteps came closer, and there was one agonizing moment as the door swung open and Fi's finger hesitated on the trigger, hoping that it was Michael and praying that if it wasn't, the hostiles wouldn't manage to shoot her before she shot them.

"Fiona," Michael breathed, and Fi's entire body relaxed incrementally.

"Took you long enough," she said instead of throwing herself into his arms; the latter would have been her preference, but it was a huge tactical no-no and it would've scared the hell out of him.

"The building's clear. Sam's covering the front doors. There were five guys in the entryway."

"We need to move the bodies," Fi said, thinking fast. "There are more buyers coming; we can't tip them off that anything's wrong."

"Buyers," Michael echoed, his gaze finally falling on the collection of teenage girls, and Fi nodded. His expression was grim as he hefted the Kel-Tec RFB she'd given him last Christmas.

"Sam and I will move the bodies. Keep everyone in here until the shooting is over; the walls are reinforced concrete, they'll stop any stray bullets."

One of the girls whimpered, and Michael winced guiltily.

"Go," Shannon said suddenly, and Fi realized her indecision was written all over her face. She wanted a piece of the bastards who'd planned to buy these girls as sex slaves, but she'd made a promise to keep them safe.

"Shannon -"

"Go, Fi. This is the only door into this room; you can guard it just as well from out there."

Fi hesitated for one final moment, then nodded.

"Thank you, Shannon."

"No," Shannon said, giving Fi a warm smile. "Thank _you_."

* * *

The final body count was thirty-six. To Fi's intense relief, none of the girls were among the dead. The three of them had discussed the best course of action, and the consensus had been to call the cops and run, leaving Miami's finest to figure out how the girls had gotten free and the giant pile of dead bodies had accumulated. Fi was elected as the best person to go back into the room and impress upon the girls the need for discretion; technically, Fi and Michael were both fugitives, and the police would probably take a dim view of what Fi stubbornly insisted had been the ideal tactical solution to the problem.

When she entered the room where she'd left Shannon and the other girls, she did a quick head count. Her stomach dropped when she came up one girl short, and she counted again, to no avail. She turned to the closest girl, a brunette in a brightly-colored bikini.

"Where's Shannon?"

The girl looked blankly at Fi, who suppressed the urge to shake the girl in frustration.

"Shannon. Short, blonde, black bikini? She was carrying a gun?"

The girl's expression cleared. "Oh, your partner," she replied, sounding relieved. "She explained everything to us."

"What?"

"Yeah, about how you two are deep undercover and we can't tell the cops that you were here. She gave Lucy over there the names of the guys we're supposed to say saved us." The brunette beamed at her. "Thank you, Agent White."

Fi stared at the girl, her mind racing. "Did she - my _partner_, did she say where she was going?"

"She said to tell you she'd be in touch."

* * *

_Three days later_

"I'm just saying, Fi, there was clearly more going on than you knew about."

"She was just a little girl, Michael!"

"She might as well be a ghost." Michael pulled out his keys, opening his front door and gesturing for Fi to precede him inside. "There's no record of her anywhere. Sam's buddy at the DMV drew a blank, and the same with his buddy at the census office. As far as Miami is concerned, she doesn't exist."

"That's kind of the point."

Michael and Fi spun toward the voice, guns drawn, and Shannon raised her hands in the air.

"I come in peace," she said, amused. "Don't shoot."

"Who are you?"

Fi hadn't lowered her gun, and from the tone of her voice, she wasn't planning to anytime soon.

"And more importantly, is that my last yogurt?" Michael added, eyeing the spoon in Shannon's hand.

"I brought a dozen more," she replied, giving him a friendly smile. "Peace offering, for breaking into your place. I heard you were something of a connoisseur."

Michael looked from Fi to Shannon, then shrugged.

"Sounds fair to me," he replied, tucking his gun back into his waistband and peeking into the fridge. "Ooh, these are the expensive ones. Fi, you want the peach one? It has real peaches on the bottom." He held up the yogurt, his trademark fake smile firmly in place.

"No, Michael," Fi snapped, her tone scathing. "I want to know who she is and what the hell is going on!"

"More for me, then." He chose a blueberry yogurt, grabbed a spoon, and flopped down in his favorite chair to watch the fireworks.

"You can put down the gun," Shannon assured Fi, sitting down on one of the barstools at the counter and taking another spoonful of yogurt. "The only reason I came here was to apologize to you."

"For what? For lying to me? For setting me up? Were you in on the whole thing? Were you _working_ with them?"

In a movement almost too fast for Michael to follow, the spoon in Shannon's hand was replaced by a Kel-Tec P3AT. Given the skimpy dress she was wearing, she must have taken a page from Fi's concealed weapons playbook. Michael was always baffled by the number of places Fi could find to hide a gun.

"Don't you dare suggest that I had anything to do with that."

Shannon's tone was every bit as deadly as Fi's, and the cold look in her eyes suggested she'd been pushed far enough. Michael looked her over again as she and Fi staged a re-enactment of high noon in the Wild West in his kitchen, and the pieces finally fell into place.

"You're ICM."

They both turned to look at him, Fi's expression puzzled and Shannon's admiring.

"Gabriel warned me you were sharp," Shannon said, and just as quickly as it had appeared, the gun was gone, replaced by a spoon laden with strawberry yogurt.

"Gabriel?" Michael raised his eyebrows. "Oh, please don't tell me Gabe Martinez is your handler."

"All right," she agreed placidly. "I won't tell you."

"She's a _spy_?"

Shannon wrinkled her nose in distaste. "I'm not a spy."

"She's an intensivist." At Fi's blank look, he added, "They're specialized. ICM is the Intensive Case Management agency; they supply agents in different fields of specialization to organizations who need them for short-term operations."

The blonde nodded in agreement, swinging her legs as she took another spoonful of yogurt. "Interpol had reports that an Austrian fugitive responsible for one of the largest sex-slave rings in Europe was going to try his luck in the states. I got assigned to get myself snatched, find the boss, and kill him." She gave Fi a conspiratorial grin. "Which you proceeded to take care of for me. And you kept the number of civilian casualties at zero, which I would have had a hell of a time doing by myself. Now Gabriel owes me dinner."

"He bet you dinner that you couldn't keep the collateral damage at zero?" Michael shook his head. "Same old Gabe. Hey, when you see him, tell him I said hi, and that if he comes to Miami I'm going to shoot him."

"I'll pass it along," she promised. "Listen, Fiona, I really am sorry, but I couldn't risk blowing my cover."

"I still don't understand," Fi insisted. "How can you even have a cover? How old are you?"

"Ah," Michael put in, leaning back in his chair. "That's the other unique quality about ICM. Most operatives in the spy game are between the ages of twenty-two and fifty-five, but ICM provides operatives for hire between the ages of twelve and twenty-one." Michael pointed his spoon at Shannon. "Of course, the younger the operative, the less training they've had and the less reliable they are -"

"- but sometimes nothing and no one else will do," Shannon finished smoothly. "Secret weapons win wars; the great Michael Westen should know that better than anyone. And I do pretty well for myself, thank you very much."

"So your people turn innocent children into weapons?" Fi demanded, but before she could work herself into a decent rage, Shannon cut her off.

"When I was eight, I killed six gang members in retaliation for the death of one of my relatives. Without ICM, I would either have turned into a delinquent or a sociopath. Instead, I get to save actual innocent children from being sold as sex slaves overseas." Shannon shrugged. "Anyway, I brought you a little present. Take it or leave it."

Fi eyed her for a long moment, then extended her hand. Shannon placed a slip of paper into her outstretched fingers and hopped lightly to her feet.

"Gotta run. Places to be, people to kill. I'll tell Gabriel you said hi, Michael."

"Don't forget the part about me shooting him. That part's important."

She laughed, shaking silky blonde hair out of her face.

"I won't forget." Shannon paused, resting a gentle hand on Fi's arm. "You were kind to me, when you thought I needed it. I won't forget that either."

And then she was gone, slipping through the front door, and the only signs she'd ever been there at all were the faint scent of honeysuckle and the paper in Fi's hand.

Michael finished his yogurt in silence, enjoying every last bite. He really had to set aside a little more money for culinary expenses; the cheap yogurt just wasn't as good as the pricey stuff.

"So what'd she give you?" he asked as he headed to the kitchen, setting his spoon in the sink. Fi held up the paper, looking stunned.

"Sixty grand, in a Cayman Islands account."

"Nice," he said approvingly. "She sure didn't learn that from Gabe, cheap bastard that he is."

"Michael -"

He shook his head.

"Trust me, Fi, you don't want to dwell on it too long. It'll just give you a headache."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He cupped her face in his palms. "The girls are all fine, the bad guys are all dead, and you're sixty thousand dollars richer. If I were you, I'd go ahead and call it a day."

"Hmm." She gave him that look, the one that said she could see right through him but was willing to play along because it amused her to indulge him. "All right. It's a day."

"Great." Quick as lightening, he leaned in and stole a kiss, then slung his arm around her shoulders. "Speaking of that sixty thousand dollars, Fi…would you consider donating some of that to my yogurt budget?"

"You have a yogurt budget?"

"I do now."


End file.
